Seasoned greetings from Copenhagen

A thread of smoke rose as our waiter applied a blowtorch to the pine twigs on the plate. The scent of smouldering pine mingled with the evocative flavours of the scallop whose shell nestled in the needles — yarrow, thyme, juniper and intense pine ice cream. Tears welled up in my wife’s eyes: “So many memories!”

I am not exaggerating: the food at Studio, newly opened near Nyhavn, Copenhagen’s picturesque stretch of waterfront, is genuinely extraordinary — for me one of the best meals of a lifetime of ambitious eating. Part of the Standard jazz and restaurant venue, it’s the latest addition to the empire of Claus Meyer, former Danish TV chef and co-founder, with René Redzepi, of Noma, three times voted best restaurant in the world and standard bearer for the New Nordic cuisine.

But Noma has done more than help create a new style of food. In its wake, Copenhagen has become one of Europe’s hottest foodie destinations. In February, the city’s culture month, Wondercool, will include gastronomy art. A decade ago this would have seemed bizarre. The Danish capital had a few good restaurants but its cuisine was mostly hearty fare: herring, meatballs and smørrebrød (open sandwiches).

Then in 2004, Meyer and Redzepi, who had just opened Noma, launched the Manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen. Its principles — based around using fresh, seasonal Nordic ingredients — were endorsed by Scandinavian governments the following year. Those principles have since begun to permeate Denmark’s food scene, from restaurants to school meals.

At its purest, their approach involves foraging for local plants such as herbs and sea buckthorn and capturing their essence with “molecular” techniques.

Thus at Studio the tattooed young chefs move calmly around an open kitchen, assembling dishes such as venison heart with sorrel emulsion; langoustine with chamomile consommé; and astonishingly intense apple slices with lemon verbena and thyme oil.

Bror, opened in the city centre this year by former Noma sous chefs Victor Wågman and Sam Nutter, is more casual though if anything more uncompromisingly Nordic: duck neck with moss and quince, fried bulls’ testicles with tartare sauce, and an entirely “natural” wine list.

Not all of Copenhagen’s food attractions are so avant-garde. The Tivoli pleasure gardens are decked out for Christmas from November: clutching a brunkage (cookie) and a glass of gløgg (mulled wine) as you wander through the light-festooned trees is enough to melt the heart of even the toughest Christmas cynic.

You can also join the Danes in their national addiction to cakes and sweets at the bakeries on every street including the cinnamon buns which it is customary for bosses to bring in for their employees one day a week. We bought some at Meyer’s bakery on Kongensgade, as well as his to-die-for sourdough bread.

But I was still curious to find out how Copenhagen got from pickled herring to seaweed emulsion. So we set off on foot with the delightful Maria Beisheim of Copenhagen Food Tours. It’s an easy way to see this compact, liveable city.

We started in the Torvehallerne, Copenhagen’s covered market, munching nutty, mature havgus, a cheddar-like cow’s cheese, with rosehip jam. Next there was akvavit (schnapps), mustard and Denmark’s most sought-after rye crackers, from the Baltic island of Bornholm.

And on we went for dazzling smørrebrød, little works of art on dark rye bread at Aamanns, the restaurant that re-invented this Danish classic. Maria led us out to the hip Nørrebro neighbourhood for some fine dark beers at the Nørrebro microbrewery. We finished with gourmet pølser, Copenhagen’s traditional street side hotdogs.

Sated, we retreated to our hotel, the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel. Created in the Sixties by Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen, it is justly regarded as a design classic: its clean lines, blonde wood paneling and functionalist “swan” and “egg” chairs have survived various revamps. Indeed, from our 19th-floor room, the lights of Tivoli and the centre below us, it felt like being in a Sixties Bond movie.

The Radisson’s superb top-floor restaurant, Alberto K, is also a fine place to test a phenomenon detected by some Danish foodies: is there a backlash against the New Nordic cuisine? Some suggest chefs feel frustrated, for example, by the gospel of local ingredients: purists will not use even lemons or black pepper.

Alberto K chef Jeppe Foldager is pragmatic. A fan of local organic produce, his fabulous seven-course tasting menu includes local scallops, langoustine, and an extraordinary amuse-bouche involving herbs and a smoked eel broth. But he also makes generous use of ingredients such as foie gras: as he says, “the Nordic cuisine will still be here but it will change.”

There was still one delicacy we hadn’t sampled: Tuborg’s Julebryg, a Christmas ale sold annually in wild scenes on “J-day”, the first Friday in November. And then, heading through the airport, I spied the snack we needed: pølser and cans of Julebryg. It wasn’t quite New Nordic. But it was still a very Danish pleasure.